Long lost questpacks # 3 Corsairs everywhere

When Turbine didn’t want to bring out an expansion, it was the corsairs time to expand their lands instead. The tale of Gondor is the story of the Corsairs as they approached Minas Tirith. Starting with a blockade of Dol Amroth in Western Gondor’s questpack, followed by a full blown take-over of Pelargir and Linhir. Finalized with it’s assault on Osgiliath and Minas Tirith pre-battle.

Every questpack listed above has its perks and falls short in another catering to a different kind of player.

Western Gondor

An introduction to Gondor in it’s better days (they just didn’t know it then). As you venture through the Path of the Dead you find green rolling hills and your main protagonist in Corsairs and Oathbreakers.

Little quest camps, some warbands and roving threats sprinkled across the map. Filled with some new gear with essence slots. And some 5 new levels to bite your axe in. It’s a new set of visuals in a comfy package with a familiar set of repeatable content for a nice prize.

Central Gondor

The land of trait points and red skies, foreboding the arrival of mordor forces onto the shores of Pelenor fields. Split into 4 subregions each with their own overarching questlines. Ethring and pelargir tell a tale of defending and retaking the hub. With a vast open coastal plain with Linhir in the middle providing more corsairs that have taken over the lighthouse of Barad Iril.

It has a bit of everything. Roving threats, a surprise big batte and some of the cut quest lines with the river-sisters being the largest one. The epic takes a bit of a backseat until you reach Pelargir and Aragorn’s encampment. It’s not a bad questpack, but most people tend to rush through it for the 4 trait points awarded. And if you want to reach 100 there are worse quest packs to skip over and forget about.

Eastern Gondor

Larger than you’d think, but most remembered for Osgiligath. It’s the first questpack since Eastern Rohan heralded the return of an actual instance (cluster). It has the same feeling as Central gondor within a different landscape. You’d trade the coastal plains for mountainous paths of Ithilien. Finding larger enemy encampments along the way. It’s the encroaching enemy on the east banks of Osgilgath.

Your first Mumakill, some hefty instances and plenty of rewards for your legendary weapon are the major highlights for this questpack. But it suffers from the Moria syndrome. After a while you have had enough of the darkness and want to reach the big spoiler that’s just on the horizon of Minas Tirith.

A questpack experiment

Overall Gondor if you’d include Minas Tirith and pelennor fields could have worked as the Gondor Expansion. But after the departure of Helm’s deep with its myriad of “game changers” in traitlines, big battles and more mounted combat it might have felt like they needed a change of pace. Now it feels like there is too much of Gondor and not enough variation in its place.